The clock was ticking towards 1am on Sunday morning and the bruises and bumps were beginning to ripen on Carl Froch’s face but neither tiredness nor pain had infiltrated his thoughts. We wanted to know about him, and his future, and Froch eloquently obliged. But he also admitted how mind-scrambling it was to see 80,000 people watching his sport. “It’s put boxing on a massive pedestal,” he said. And even in this most level– and hard-headed of fighters one could detect a small seepage of delight and awe.

A few hours later, when the dust had further settled, the promoter Eddie Hearn gave his verdict. Froch had, he said, “single-handedly resurrected pay-per-view” in the UK. Just because a million people are rumoured to have lobbed £16.95 in Hearn’s pay-TV Wurlitzer does not mean we have to hum along. But it is only natural to wonder whether boxing is having a moment again.

The attendance for Froch v Groves II was staggering: the biggest British fight since before the second world war. It wasn’t a given that the rematch woulf do so well, despite a first encounter of such raging intensity, controversy and hype. As Barry Hearn pointed out, Chris Eubank’s first fight with Michael Watson in 1991 also had a controversial ending, in front of 12 million on ITV, yet the rematch at White Hart Lane sold only 14,000 tickets – a mere 4,000 more than their initial, sell-out bout.

In Hearn Sr’s view boxing “is a cyclical business and it’s got almost a vertical trajectory at the moment. It’s like a snowball going down a mountain, it gathers momentum as it gets bigger.” Mixed metaphors apart, it is hard to argue with what he says.

That is harder to judge. But we should not be sniffy about the nouveau fans who came as much for the occasion as Froch’s feints and thrusts. They have always been with us. In AJ Liebling’s classic text The Sweet Science, published in the mid-1950s, he noted that at the rematch between Sugar Ray Robinson and Randolph Turpin the ringside seats “filled slowly; many of the people who buy them do not much like boxing but go to big fights so they can talk about them afterwards”. Twas ever thus.

Nor should we necessarily assume that modern boxing is not as good as it was “back in the day” – whenever that day was. Certainly British TV audiences are not as big as in the 80s and 90s. But that pained lament for the old times was heard as far back as the 19th century when Pierce Egan wrote about the decline in boxing between the defeat of John Broughton in 1750 and the rise of Daniel Mendoza in 1789 in Boxiana.

Arguably no sport looks back over its shoulder as much as boxing. Even in 1951, when Robinson – the greatest of them all – was still in his prime, the legendary boxer and manager Ted Broadribb bemoaned the lack of application from modern pugilists in his autobiography Fighting Is My Life. “The old-timers thought nothing of taking off hat and coat in a hall when a boxer had failed to put in an appearance and fighting 20 rounds on the sport,” he sighed. Liebling, meanwhile, fingered “the popularisation of the ridiculous gadget called television” for the decline in standards.

Of course boxing has its problems. The alphabet soup of world championships and governing bodies means it is hard to keep up. The promoter wars between Golden Boy and Top Rank in the US means the best fights are often not made. But there have always been problems. Whether because of corruption, a lack of TV - read the letters pages of Boxing Illustrated after ABC stopped showing the sport following the death of Benny “Kid” Paret in 1962 - or even too much TV (in the 80s the promoter Mike Barrett warned that “boxing is having far too much exposure on with disastrous effects on attendances.”) And yet it survives. It always does.

Saturday's mammoth clash between Carl Froch and George Groves was yet another example of boxing's enduring appeal. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

The general rule of thumb is this: boxing is never as down on its heels as its detractors imagine, or as successful it could be if it sorted itself out.

And in the UK there are encouraging signs. Eddie Hearn says Sky’s boxing figures have doubled since 2011. The amateur game is better funded and better prepared at the elite level than ever. That should ensure a steady stream of high-quality talent in turning pro in the years ahead. But can the sport capitalise?

Barry McGuigan knows what it is like when it does. After 19 million people watched him beat Eusebio Pedroza to win the world featherweight title in 1985 he could not walk 250m from the Grosvenor House hotel to Hyde Park Corner because he was mobbed by well-wishers. McGuigan wants other fighters to achieve that sort of popularity and says that, if BBC or ITV commits to boxing properly and develops it patiently, he has “absolutely no doubt” it will return huge audiences.

He is also typically eloquent when asked about what Froch v Groves II means for the sport. “It tells you that it is thriving and it will continue to thrive,” he says. “There is something about boxing that touches the human spirit. It’s about survival, bombs landing on you, getting through it, having the courage to get up. In many ways it is indicative of life. Boxing is life.”